Tango jako maszyna pamięci
Tango as a memory machine

Summary/Abstract: The article looks at the history of Argentine tango in Poland using the tools of song studies and memory studies. The author makes reference to Marvin Carlson’s concept and treats tango as a memory machine; in her opinion, pre-war Polish tango allows to tell an important fragment of the history of Poland and Central Europe. Focusing on selected songs, she shows how their history (and the fates of their creators) is entangled in various cultural, social and political contexts. The author constructs the narrative by choosing one tango, Plegaria by the Argentinian musician Eduardo Bianco, which was chosen for his debut at the Qui Pro Quo theatre by the Dana Choir. According to a legend, this tango was to be the ‘tango of death’ from the Janowska concentration camp, the inspiration for Paul Celan’s Todesfuge (Death Fugue). Other Polish songs of the time are also recalled (e.g. the tango Wanda, alluding to the activities of the Zwi Migdal organisation, the foxtrot Gdy Petersburski razem z Goldem gra (When Petersburski and Gold play together), or the Polish version of La Cumparsita with lyrics by Andrzej Włast) and their composers (Jerzy Petersburski, the brothers Artur and Henryk Gold, Henryk Wars and Dawid Bajgelman), lyricists (Andrzej Włast and Emanuel Schlechter) and performers (Mieczysław Fogg, Adam Aston and Wiera Gran). Many tango artists in Poland had Jewish roots and perished during the war, which means that the genre itself became entangled here in the history of the Holocaust.

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